PIATCO fiasco

DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
9/13/2006



The multi-billion peso question in the Piatco case is: why the Gloria Arroyo government is paying out such huge amount for a faulty structure and worse, for land that government itself owns. There is no tunnel linking the controversial “new” airport which has seen its ceiling collapse like an old building (even before it had ever been inaugurated), a tunnel that was supposed to facilitate and ease the transport of passengers and cargo from the other adjacent airports like the Centennial airport; as it is the cost of movement between the existing and the Piatco airport will result in enormous added cost.

I have been vehemently critical and opposed to the Piatco airport from the very beginning as I saw it to be an imposition of an expensive and unnecessary new facility. Common sense told me that another new airport beside one old airport, the NAIA, and a relatively new Centennial would already be too much redundancy. And I knew even before the details of the project were unveiled to the public ages ago that the very bad part of the whole Piatco proposition would be the additional burden on traveling Filipinos in terms of higher terminal fees, porterage and other charges.

Things turned out exactly as my common sense predicted, terminal fee for the Piatco airport doubled from the rates in the old airports, and other charges were also raised. Porterage and airport transport such as taxis and other for hire vehicles were monopolized by the new airport owners, which caused great stir and agitation among the airport service contractors already operating in the old airports. The Piatco’s argument at one time was that the new facilities required new investments which justifies the higher charges – but they never asked the public if this new facility was needed at all.

The NAIA airport has certainly become an eyesore and a pain to go through for check-in, immigration and customs processing especially when the aged air-conditioning conks out, but the spic-and-span Centennial airport constructed by the Philippine Airlines owners for its own international and domestic operational needs has been a great comfort to travelers for its pleasant and spacious architecture, unfailingly comfortable climate management, its business lounge and its overall efficiency. Adding the Piatco airport was a superfluity intended to be a “get rich quick” scheme for its proponents.

Three years ago an Englishman employed by the foreign partners of the Piatco came to see me and proposed for us to write in favor of the white elephant airport. I suppose the proposition carried with it a handsome fee. Before the Englishman said much more I declined the offer and explained why I can’t support the project, and gave all the reasons I have given above. One more thing I added that the Englishman apparently didn’t like was the information I got that the German counterpart for the project is actually money-laundering by some German political parties and leaders.

Are you surprised that my sources would insinuate graft and corruption in German politics? Why? Are European politicians exempt from the seamier side of politics? We only have to go back to the periodic corruption scandals that erupt in European politics such as the EU commission sudden revamp a few years ago on charges of corruption, or charges against German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and even now the lingering allegations against Chirac in connection with financial anomalies. They may have more finesse but their political parties also engage in creative fund raising.

Our source is a German and his Filipina wife who tipped us off on why the Piatco matter was hush-hush in Germany at that time it initially exploded as a public issue. The German politicians needed to launder this fund quick into a project that could rationalize it as an productive investment, but they went around Constitutional limitations on foreign ownership egged on by local businessmen who had not the wherewithal for such a huge project. It floundered through two Philippine administrations until this third one of Arroyo which has treated it in haphazard fashion.

Gloria handled the Piatco project in a haphazard way, using the Supreme Court, the media and the government, which raised suspicion of evasion tactics design to cover nefarious intentions. At the same time the Gloria government, being precariously weak over massive credibility problems with the public, was at the mercy of po0werful buffeting winds from the European community whose politicians support the German government’s demands on the project even though violations of the constitutions really merited expropriation of the entire project.

Instead of the foreign and local violators of the Philippine Constitution getting their illegal project expropriated it seems now that with Gloria’s payment of P 3-billion it is the government property on which the Piatco airport stands (lands owned respectively by the Philippine Air Force and the NAIA) that will be expropriated by the Germans and its local partners. It’s a total fiasco now as Gloria wraps up a decade of the ill-fated Piatco airport project her mentor Fidel Ramos started which the Estrada administration programmed to do right but was aborted posthaste, which Gloria is managing to crash.

It is an ignoble end to the Filipino’s hopes for rationalizing and modernizing its premier airports caused by a corrupt regime that is totally weakened by massive public loathing, Gloria cannot do anything right anymore.